Two Passionate Proposals
by Serenity Woods
Two Passionate Proposals
Text copyright 2013 Serenity Woods
All Rights Reserved
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is coincidental.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Black Hawke Down
Surrender Your Heart
About the Author
Also Available
Black Hawke Down
It’s not often a man is sent to assassinate the love of his life.
Major Cameron Hawke waited in the shadows, still and silent, icily calm. Almost invisible with his black combat suit and jet-black hair, he studied the doorway of the motel unit where the ex-girlfriend he’d hunted halfway across the world had finally gone to ground. How ironic—and yet fitting—he’d been the first to track her down. Wanted for murder, and for treason against the British Crown, she’d also broken his heart. It was only fair he’d be the one to put a bullet through hers.
He touched the space between his eyebrows and activated his second sight. The midnight scene sprang into colour, the orange and lemon trees pulsing with a green glow, while smaller, red auras showed nocturnal animals hidden in the undergrowth. But Hawke kept his attention pinned to the motel door. The frame glittered with scarlet dust, illuminated by the protective seal she’d placed on it.
Normally, he would have cursed, knowing any magical seal set by Imogen was going to be impenetrable. However, the glitter appeared dim, not as vibrant as it should be, dull patches indicating the seal’s age. Obviously, she hadn’t bothered to renew the spell, had no doubt thought she’d be safe for several days. But then she hadn’t known he was tracking her.
The phone on Hawke’s belt vibrated against his hip and he removed it and dropped to his haunches, keeping one eye on the door. The message on the display came from headquarters—the New Zealand branch of the S.U.—the Supernatural Unit of the British Army. They wanted to know if he’d found her yet.
Hawke studied the text for a moment. Then he hit reply and quickly thumbed in: Not yet, possibly in range, LMK when u r near. He hit send and slid the phone back onto his belt. He lied easily enough. Even without the seal on the door, he would have known she was in that room. He sensed her, knew the pulse of her aura as well as other, ordinary men knew their girlfriend’s perfume. But he didn’t want to report her as found. Not yet. He’d be damned if someone else came in and spoiled his moment of victory. He wanted to take her down himself.
She’d led him a merry dance, no doubt about that. He’d tracked her across Europe, lost her temporarily in Rome, then picked her up in Prague. He’d trailed her to India and across the seas to Singapore, then finally followed her to the other side of the world, to the two islands comprising New Zealand, adrift in the Pacific Ocean. There, he’d had trouble pinning her down; she’d left the main cities and holed up in a tiny town in the tropical Northland, and she’d clearly thought she was safe, for a while at least.
Hadn’t she guessed he would be sent to find her? Perhaps she didn’t think she was important enough. She obviously hadn’t realised practically the whole of the S.U. was on the hunt for her under the orders of the major-general herself. Then again, it wasn’t often a captain of the S.U. defected—in fact, this was a first, as far as he knew. And not just any old captain, but the most powerful nature witch the S.U. had seen in a long time. To lose her to Chaos was a catastrophic disaster for the Forces of Light. He wasn’t surprised the whole of the magical army was hunting her.
Hawke stood and crept up to the building. The unit was one of eight belonging to the motel, scattered in a grassy park surrounded by mandarins, kiwifruit and lemon trees. Having never been to New Zealand, Hawke found he liked the tropical palms and the warm, humid weather. Even now, at midnight in the middle of January, the sultry air caressed him with warm fingers. In better circumstances, he might have enjoyed the trip, but now he focussed on the task at hand and barely noticed his surroundings. The resentment and anger that had boiled inside him since the day Imogen left stirred once again, and he harnessed those feelings, feeling them stroke their way through him, heating his blood. Good. He would need every ounce of power he possessed to fight the witch. He could use the negative feelings she aroused against her. The thought made him smile.
He stroked the doorway from the top of the frame to the bottom. A silvery light radiated from the places he touched and spread to the edges, eating away at the sparkling red seal. Within seconds, he dispelled the charm.
Hawke put his palm above the handle. As a warlock skilled in the lore of metal, he had no trouble forcing the door to unlock. When the mechanism clicked open, however, he paused. A seed of doubt lodged in his chest—the first bit of hesitation to enter his mind since he’d been given this mission. Had she changed since he last saw her over six months ago? What would he feel when he finally faced her? Could he really kill the one woman in his life he’d truly loved?
But it had all been a lie, he told himself fiercely. None of it had been true. All the time they’d been dating, she’d been working for Chaos, waiting for the moment she could betray them all to the dark forces. He’d only been a diversion for her, and she’d discarded him without a second thought or a backward glance. He owed her nothing.
The resentment and anger built in his solar plexus and he welcomed those feelings, drawing on the emotions to expand his energy. His hands grew hot, his blood thickened with magic, and the taste of metal flooded his mouth.
Pushing down the handle, he moved quickly into the unit.
He stepped into a small, pitch-dark living room. His eyes already used to the darkness, he scanned the room, found it empty, and strode quickly to the corridor at the other end where the bedroom door stood ajar. He didn’t stop to think. His assassin’s instincts kicked in, and he went into autopilot. He thrust the door open, gathering the energy in his solar plexus and holding out his hand toward the figure lying on the bed.
Molten lead scorched down his arms and pooled in his hands, forming bullets that cracked out the ends of his fingers. As the bullets moulded, however, the woman on the bed moved, awoken by a sense more honed than her hearing or sight, and as his fingers sparked, she hurled herself off the side of the bed. The bullets thudded into the mattress, missing their target by inches.
“Fuck!” He’d lost the element of surprise. His success had depended on catching her unaware; now he’d have to face her head on. There had been a time when he’d thought himself more powerful than her, but that was before he’d known of her involvement with Chaos, and now he wasn’t so sure.
The witch rolled to her feet and, as he gathered the energy within his hands to fire again, she held out her palm toward him. Her ball of lightning hit him squarely in the solar plexus, and he gasped as it thrust him back against the dressing table, knocking him off balance.
His hands curled and his middle fingers touched his thumbs, forming circles of metal that he threw at her, but she waved her hand, a caress that turned the manacles to brightly coloured flower petals that floated to the carpet.
Her fingers traced a pattern in the air and thin vines snaked up his legs, anchoring him to the floor. He ripped his feet away, slicing at the vines with white-hot blades that fell from his hands. Anger burned within him, and he built a sphere of energy between his palms. Before she could raise her power again, he fired another round of bullets at her. She ducked behind the bed, but not before he heard a squeal; at least one of them had found its target this time.
He leapt onto the
bed. She cowered on the other side, and he held out a hand toward her. She glanced up at him, and his gaze locked on her face, pale as milk, eyes wide with pain. A memory shot through him of her lying beside him, eyes gentle after their lovemaking, laughing at something he’d said, and he faltered. The molten lead that had been gathering in his hands fell onto the bed in a shower of ball bearings that bounced and rolled onto the floor.
Damn it! Cursing, he started to summon his energy into a glowing ball of razor-sharp blades, but she’d seen his weakness, and she rose before the weapons left his hands. With a twist of her wrists, she turned the blades into dandelion puffs that floated away to the ceiling. She laced another pattern before her, and vines traced up his body and down his arms.
He started to build his energy again, but she moved her hands and pulled his feet out from under him. He fell backward onto the bed, narrowly missing banging his head on the wall, and collapsed onto the pile of pillows. The vines moved across him, snaking rapidly over his torso and legs and up his arms. He cursed, scattering more bullets in her direction, but she twisted out of their way, no doubt sensing victory. His hands were wrenched above his head, and he looked up to see vines wrapping around the headboard, pinning his arms and hands flat against the wooden slats.
With his hands bound and fingers outstretched, he couldn’t cast. He was defenceless. He swore and fought with all his strength, but the magic twine was as strong as his steel rope, lashing him to the bed. He swore again, loudly and violently, trying to use his brute strength to rip out the vines, but only succeeding in giving himself rope burns and a couple of wrenched muscles.
He stopped struggling and glared into the dark corner of the room where she stood. To his right, an outside lamp illuminated the pathway and slanted in through the glass sliding doors, casting a pool of silver between them across the bed. His stomach twisted with anger and fear as she walked toward him into the light. He’d seen her split daemons apart, forcing branches and thorns through skin and muscle, ignoring their screams until she’d dispatched them back to the hell from which they came. He knew what she was capable of.
She stepped forward until the light completely illuminated her. Her voice, when she spoke, was quiet with disbelief.
“Cameron?”
Hawke stared at her. Her right hand pressed against her left shoulder, and blood oozed between her fingers. Against her black vest and shorts, her skin looked as white as the sheets on the bed. Her hair, which was the yellow of ripe corn in the sun, now looked pale as moonlight, and it curled well past her shoulders, untouched by any form of scissors for the past few months. She’d lost so much weight he barely recognised her. Her lips were bloodless, her eyes wide and dark in her pale face. She looked like a hunted animal that had learned to survive in fear and darkness.
His gaze traced up her figure, lingered on the whiteness of her skin where the vest dipped between her breasts, paused on her soft, pale lips, her dark eyes. She was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. But she’d given herself to Chaos; she had let her heart be infested with blackness. She was pure evil, and she’d already broken his heart once. He wasn’t going to let her do it again. Hatred burned within him, although with his hands bound he couldn’t focus it. He cursed himself for the moment of weakness leading to this moment.
He wasn’t going to get out of his bonds by force. He was going to have to find some other way. He saw the confusion in her eyes, the vulnerability, and suddenly he knew what to do.
“Hello, Imogen.” He smiled. “Found you.”
*
Captain Imogen Williamson—for that was how she thought of herself, although the S.U. had withdrawn her rank—stepped back into the shadows so she could hide her reaction from the man on the bed.
She surveyed him from the privacy of the darkness. Her heart thumped against her ribs, the surge causing the wound in her shoulder to pulse. She ignored it, too shocked by his arrival to worry about the pain.
Was it really him? Her brain refused to believe what her eyes were seeing. How could he be here, in New Zealand, thirteen thousand miles away from where she’d left him? And yet, it was him, clearly. Her eyes scanned the body she knew so well. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, long legs, all encased in padded black armour, his well-muscled arms now pinned tightly against the headboard. He wouldn’t like that. His eyes glittered with anger, pools of molten silver in the light from the window. His black hair was longer than she’d seen it before; although short up the back and sides, the top didn’t stand up in its usual spiky bristle but rather slanted across his forehead, covering one eyebrow. The energy spilling from his muscular body washed over her like a liquid. He was like a chained panther, straining at a leash. She could feel the heat of his blood coursing around his body from across the room, making her burn. His sheer power made her catch her breath.
She wanted to run up to him, to throw herself in his arms. But the wound in her shoulder throbbed, reminding her of his betrayal.
“They sent you to kill me,” she whispered.
He said nothing, twisting his hands, trying his bonds. She felt a brief bite of fear. She’d seen what his power could do, how he could create bands of steel to tighten around a daemon’s head until its brain burst, the way he could form tiny daggers to slice off a monster’s skin in inch-wide strips, how he could pour molten metal into a creature’s mouth, burning it from the inside out. The bonds held, though, keeping his hands above him, containing his magic, while his eyes searched for her in the darkness, sweeping like the beam from a lighthouse.
She moved along the bed to find the shirt she’d taken off a few hours earlier. She folded it into a pad, then pressed it against her shoulder, hissing as pain stabbed through her. She needed to get the bullet out, but she couldn’t tend to the wound by herself, and she couldn’t start healing the wound until she removed the slug.
She looked back at him. “They sent a major.” She perched on the edge of a table. “They must really want me dead.”
“Can you blame them? A captain of the S.U. seduced by Chaos? Did you think they’d just let you go?”
For a moment, she didn’t trust herself to speak. The hate in his eyes burned through her like liquid metal. She began to shake. It was worse than she’d thought. “How many of you?” she managed to say finally.
“The whole army’s after you, Imogen. I just happened to find you first.” He smiled wryly. “It’s not going to end well. Why don’t you let me finish it here, now? Wouldn’t it be better if it were me? Surely, you don’t want some stranger to terminate you? Come on, for old time’s sake.” He indicated his bound hands with his head. His eyes glinted silver.
Imogen pressed her shaking hand to her lips. All this time, the months she’d spent hiding, she’d dreamed he was waiting for her. She’d imagined he’d somehow known what had happened to her, that while she was lying in the grimy, dark motel rooms as she slunk her way across the world, he was lying there too, in England, dreaming about her and the day they’d be together again.
How naive she’d been. Of course they would have got to him. Who better to track her than the best hunter in the S.U.? And how would they have gotten him to track her other than by convincing him she’d turned?
She glared at him. “Is that what you think? You really believe I’ve gone over to the darkness?”
He shifted again, wincing as his arms strained at the vines, which only tightened as he struggled. “That sounds like something a renegade witch would say.”
“I suppose it does.” She got up and walked over to the sliding glass doors. Outside, past the weak light illuminating the path, darkness shrouded the park. Were there others out there? She closed her eyes, sending out a pulse of energy across the grass. He shivered in response, but she ignored him. The pulse found nothing, not for a few hundred yards anyway. He was alone. He wanted her for himself. But they wouldn’t be long. If he was right and the whole army was after her, he would only be a few hours ahead of the others, at most.
Her hands clenched. They’d all turned on her. Was it so easy to believe she’d betrayed them?
“Tell me.” She let the curtain drop and turned back to him. “Who gave the order? Hellerman? Ross?”
“It was Walker herself,” he said, naming the major-general. “Right from the top.”
Imogen laughed.
He frowned. “What?”
“Of course it was.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She sighed, thinking back to the day Surina Walker called her into her office. “It was the major-general who sent me on the mission.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness out of her voice.
“What mission?”
“The one that took me away from you.”
Hawke surveyed her, eyes narrowing. “What are you talking about?”
Imogen walked up to the bed. She knelt on the mattress and, ignoring the pain in her shoulder, leaned forward on his chest, looking into his eyes. “You may be right, this may be it for me, this may be the end of the line, but I’m not going until you know every little detail, until you know what they did to me. When you know it all, if you still want to kill me, well then, I may let you. But may it ever be on your conscience that you’ve killed an innocent woman.”
Hawke looked at her, his eyes dark and smouldering, but said nothing. He flexed his hands again and glared at her with a strange mixture of hate and desire. And Imogen caught her breath, something stirring in her stomach, transported back to the moment she first saw him.
*
She’d been on the training ground, running circuits. Rain fell in sheets, plastering her uniform to her body. A typical south Devon spring day. She belly crawled through the mud, sliding under several lengths of barbed wire, then looked up as another member of her platoon nudged her and pointed across the field. She stopped moving and glanced at the tall figure standing to one side of the circuit. He didn’t move or beckon her over, but she could see him staring at her. His aura pulsed with blue, and she cursed, recognising the command.
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